One of my favorite species of birds is the surf scoter, a sea duck that is abundant during October through April along the North American west coast as far south as central Baja (Mexico), after breeding in the boreal forests and tundra of Alaska. It …
In chapter 5 of She Wore a Yellow Dress, I describe my first date back in 1965 with a fellow Hull University undergraduate who became my wife. She curiously asked about my favorite hobby, and when I said it was bird watching, she wanted the …
One of the very few families of birds that remained constant when I moved from England to California in 1979 was the family of terns. I regularly saw Sandwich, Arctic, common, black, and little terns during my visits to Spurn Point in Yorkshire, and during 1971 I made a pilgrimage to Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland to see Sandwich, Arctic and common terns nesting. The latter is detailed in chapter 29 of my novel She Wore a Yellow Dress. They were extremely rare around my home town of York although passage Arctic terns occasionally showed up. Most members of this family are long distance migrants, moving between the northern and southern hemispheres when the seasons change. When I moved to California, sandwich, arctic and black terns were still present, the little tern was renamed the least tern, and new members included the Caspian, elegant, royal, and Forster’s terns.
Related to seagulls, terns are classified under the bird family, Laridae, and although similar in appearance to gulls, they have long swept-back wings and forked tail. They are usually identified by their deep rowing flight pattern and quick turns and hovering in pursuit of fish. They can dive vertically into the water from 20 to 50 feet (6 to 15 meters). Additionally, terns have straight, sharply-pointed bills, whereas gulls possess a more hooked one.
Sandwich terns
Worldwide, there are close to 40 species of terns, usually colored black and white, although in most cases, more white than black. To the casual beach goer they may look alike. The best way to distinguish between species is to note their size, the color of their bill (red, orange, yellow, or black), the existence or otherwise of blackish wing tips, and the length of their tail streamers. Additionally, the elegant, royal and Sandwich terns display a ragged crest on the back of their heads, especially noticeable during the breeding season.
Most importantly, terns are known for the great distances they travel, especially the Arctic tern that breeds during summer in the Arctic and migrates south for winter to Antarctica. They each can travel around 25,000 miles (40,000 km) annually, gliding as well as flying, usually out at sea, and taking around 40 days for a one-way migration.
Arctic tern migration map
During my years living in Northern California, I have watched the fishing antics of the common tern, the Forster’s tern, the Caspian tern, and the elegant tern. Some varieties breed locally and others, like the common tern, are visitors during migration. The one species of tern that eluded me for many years was the least tern, the smallest of all terns, about the size of a large songbird. They breed in small numbers in the San Francisco Bay Area, but because of their endangered status, they are subject to close protection.
Least tern
Least tern Range Map: orange – breeding; blue – non-breeding
The least tern is distinguished by a distinct white patch on its forehead, interrupting its otherwise solid black cap, and in summer has a yellow bill with a black tip, and yellow feet. It usually flies low over the water with quick deep wing beats and a hunched-over look, and shrill cries of “kellick” or “kip-kip-kip”, often heard just before it is seen plunging into the water after its prey. The species nests in colonies, usually around 25 pair per colony, scratches out a “scrape” in sand or gravel on the beach, and lays three green eggs blotched with brown.
Next and eggs of least tern
So you can imagine my excitement when, at the start of August 2021, while on vacation in San Diego County, I discovered that least terns were nesting only a few miles away, close to the Mexican border, under the protection of the Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Reserve. It was a dull, cool, Friday morning as I and my friend drove south for about 30 minutes, before arriving at Imperial Beach, where we quickly located the Reserve’s Headquarters.We were greeted warmly and offered abundant advice. Immediately, I was told that Bewick’s wrens, scrub jays, dark-eyed juncos, bushtits, song sparrows and Anna’s hummingbirds had been seen close to the Reserve’s building that morning. However, we were soon on our way across the marsh to see what we could see, along with the accompaniment of the sound of helicopters from the nearby helicopter base. In the distance was Tijuana, and the US – Mexico border wall, undulating along the hills and eventually running down to the beach and into the Pacific Ocean.
Tijuana Wildlife Reserve
Almost immediately there were juvenile black-crowned night herons waiting to catch fish, and black phoebes fluttering in search of insects. Other bird species we recorded during our walk were the American kestrel, northern harrier, marbled godwit, cliff swallows, northern mockingbird and a Forster’s tern fishing in the tidal lagoon, but no sighting of a least tern.
Forster’s tern
The warden commiserated with us back in headquarters, and told us to visit the beach to the south of the town. At first we encountered several groups of large, stocky shorebirds, called willets, searching for food at the water’s edge, and could see several types of terns fishing out at sea, mainly elegant terns and one large Caspian tern.
However, just when we were about to give up on our search, we heard overhead the cry of “kip-kip-kip”, as two least terns passed us by. They are closely related to the Old World little tern, but are treated as a separate species based on voice difference. I had achieved the purpose of our journey.
Willet
As for the fate of terns, their numbers and enormous range offers them some security although for several species their numbers have dropped. They suffer loss of habitat from development and disturbance and from predators. Longer time, climate change presents a major threat. The Arctic tern that follows the summer season between hemispheres is at risk of losing up to 50 percent of its natural habitat due to global warming.
This is a memoir of a COVID-invigorated Bird Spotter and his July 2021 journey from Half Moon Bay to the pinnacles of the Southeast Farallon Islands, and waters beyond, in search of pelagic birds: puffins, shearwaters, storm-petrels, and albatross. My thanks go to Alvaro Jaramillo …
For thousands of years, domesticated pigeons have been an integral part of human life. Egyptian hieroglyphics and stone carvings in Mesopotamia (now modern Iraq) indicate that these birds were domesticated at least 5,000 years ago. Over centuries they have been kept as symbols of prosperity, …
It was the summer of 1954 when my childhood hobby of birds’ egg collecting came to an end. The British government implemented the Protection of Birds Act, 1954 that forbid me to take wild birds’ eggs, and at the same time, protected adults and their nests from human interference. The United States had many years earlier, in 1918, introduced similar legislation through its Migratory Bird Treaty Act that applied to approximately 1100 species, but which excluded non-native types such as house sparrows, European starlings, and pigeons.
Where I lived, up until the mid-1950s, it was normal to go “bird nesting” and gather the eggs you found to build up your egg collection. I never thought about the consequences on bird populations. Even after it was illegal, I refused to throw away my assortment of eggs. More about my egg collecting habits can be found in my two novels Unplanned and She Wore a Yellow Dress.
With these strict new controls, you would have expected bird populations to boom, but this has not always been the case. The reasons are complicated and below I try to describe some of the important aspects of avian demographics. At the end of this paper, I illustrate the decline using the European skylark and North America bobolink.
A. Background data
A recent survey of 529 bird species in North America found a net decline in population of nearly 3 billion birds since 1970. Today the current bird population is 29 percent lower than it was. The impact is different by species and by the habitat they prefer, and the changes affect common species such as meadowlarks (a member of the blackbird family), horned larks, and red-winged blackbirds, as well as rarer species. There are also birds whose population has moved in the opposite direction. For example, bald eagles show a gain of 15 million birds, falcon populations have increased by a third, and there are 34 million more waterfowl (ducks and geese).
Many birds that migrate are affected by this overall decline. Current US radar data indicates a 14 percent decrease in nocturnal spring-migration during the past decade.
Europe is suffering from a similar situation of increases and decreases. Wintering waterfowl in the UK have more than doubled, and species such as the jackdaw, wood pigeon, great spotted woodpecker, and nuthatch show a several-fold increase. Conversely, species such as the song thrush, turtle dove, nightingale, cuckoo, swift and fieldfare show alarming declines.
There are about 83 million pairs of birds nesting in the UK, down 19 million compared with the late 1960s, but the total bird population seems to have stayed fairly constant since the 1990s. Not included in these numbers are the estimated 6 million captive red-legged partridges and 47 million pheasants that are released annually for shoots.
A new study released by the University of New South Wales estimates a worldwide median number of wild birds of 50 billion, or six birds for every human on the planet, but is cautious about the accuracy of its calculations. Reliable comparative historical data is missing because there has been no consistent methodology used to establish these counts. The global number of wild bird species is currently in the range of 11,000 to 18,000, and there are around 1,200 species that have fewer than 5,000 individuals worldwide.
Avian decline is usually attributed to habitat loss (e.g. caused by new farm practices, urbanization, and drainage, etc.), the use of pesticides, hunting and killing, and climate change.
Some species remain common and widespread, with four species qualifying for the worldwide “billion birds” club; these are the house sparrow (1.6 billion), the European starling (1.3 billion), the ring-billed gull (1.2 billion), and the barn swallow (1.1 billion).
At the same time, several bird species are now extinct. In North America, the dusky seaside sparrow that lived on the east coast of Florida was last seen alive during the 1980s, and the Bachman’s warbler that bred in the south-east and mid-western states of the US, and wintered in Cuba, is believed to have become extinct in the second half of the 1900s.
In Europe, the pied raven (a genetic color morph of the common raven), only found on the Faroe Islands, was last spotted during the 1940s, and in summary, since the year 1500, it is estimated about 180 bird species have become extinct worldwide .
So why do these trends matter? The worry is what happens to nature when species that play key roles in pollination and seed dispersal or control the abundance of pests, decline or disappear. The potential effects on society are unclear.
B. The skylark and the bobolink
Two examples of bird species under serious threat are the Eurasian skylark and the American bobolink (named for its bubbling “Bob O’Lincoln” song). The species are not related. The bobolink is a member of the blackbird family and the skylark belongs to the lark group of birds; only its cousin, the horned lark, is native to North America. Both species rely on grassland and farmland, which are the habitats in North America that have suferred the greatest loss of bird population during the past 50 years, with a 53 percent decline and a reduction of half a billion birds.
Both species symbolize the countryside’s return of summer. Males deliver a bubbly, metallic song, often fluttering high above the fields, as they look for mates. Their melody has been associated with joy, freedom and enthusiasm, and has inspired poets such as Emily Dickinson, Shelley, Tennyson and Wordsworth. Both species nest on the ground, but that is where the similarities end.
Their appearance is distinctively different as the illustrations below show.
The bobolink migrates between southern Canada and the northern states to southern South America twice a year, a return journey of approximately 12,500 miles (20,000 km). In contrast, skylarks generally do not migrate. However, the two species are known to appear in each other’s territory and both are suffering serious declines in their native habitat.
Skylarks, while still common in the UK with a population of about 1.7 million, are calculated to have experienced a population decline of around 75 percent since the early 1970s. The switch in agriculture from spring to fall sown cereals has interfered with the birds’ food supply; the move from hay to silage has caused nests to be destroyed by machinery due to earlier harvesting; and on grasslands, intensified stock grazing exposes nests to trampling and makes them more accessible to predators. Efforts to reverse this trend are underway and include more organic farming, providing incentives for sowing spring crops, and implementing standards to prevent nest destruction. Indications at the present time are that these steps are stabilizing the population of skylarks
The plight of the bobolink is similar that of the skylark, with its population having declined around 65 percent since 1970. Even so, it is fairly common, with a breeding population of around eight million, of which 28 percent breed in Canada and 72 percent in the United States. Habitat destruction is the main cause for their loss of breeding territory, and it has to contend with dangerous pesticides in its wintering locations and is often treated as an agricultural pest. While on migration, it is hunted as food in places such as Jamaica.
Efforts are underway to control these interferences, with bans on dangerous pesticides, encouraging working farms to establish additional grassland, maintaining larger fields that apparently are preferred by the bobolink, and probably, most important of all, incentivizing farmers to mow hay fields outside the breeding season.
During the 1950s and 1960s, as a young birder in the north of England, I ignored the rather common, drab and inconspicuous-looking birds known as house sparrows and tree sparrows. Both are Old World species, distributed across Europe and Asia, and rarely migrate significant distances. …
Blue-crowned mot mot The first resplendent quetzal I ever saw was on April 5, 1998 in the Monteverde Cloud Forest, Costa Rica. The species is considered by many to represent the most beautiful bird in the world, and although it was partially obscured by …
Growing up in Yorkshire, I called them waterhens (now more usually known as moorhens). They are humble birds, preferring freshwater wetlands, and are sedentary, except that they are joined by birds moving from north-west Europe to winter in the UK. As their name implies, they are the size and shape of a chicken, they “cluck” like a hen, and lay a similar number of eggs. As a child, I sat on the edge of ponds and talked to the birds as they sat incubating their eggs on bulky platforms of reed stems. Usually there were 6 to 10 eggs in the nest, one laid each day, but occasionally the number was as high as 15 to 20, a sign that cooperative breeding was taking place. My novel Unplanned gives you a sense of why I connected so closely with these birds.
Common moorhen nest and eggs
When they were disturbed, the sitting bird would quietly slip off the nest and disappear into the bulrushes. The dark brown plumage on their back and wings, and the bluish-black feathers on their belly made it difficult to see them among the vegetation or afloat on the dark-colored water. I would try to spot their chunky bright red bill with its citrus-yellow tip, or look for the white stripes on the flank. As soon as I left, I knew the waterhen would return to its nest. They are mainly sedentary birds, rarely leaving their territory, although you could see them poking around on land during winter when the ponds froze over.
Some of my ornithological experts called them moorhens even though the last place you would find them would be on the moors. It turns out that the word “moor” is derived from the old English word “mere”, which in turn gives rise to the word “marsh”. This made sense since I occasionally visited Hornsea Mere, a large expanse of freshwater near the south-east coast of Yorkshire, where I would see many moorhens.
Common moorhen Range Map
When I moved to the California in 1979 I thought I was still seeing moorhens, but was told that they were common gallinules, apparently the Latin word for “small hen”. To me they looked the same. They walked on floating vegetation and behaved secretively, just like the ones I knew back home. However, after much debate, they were declared a separate subspecies. Apparently they “cluck” differently from moorhens, and there are slight morphological differences affecting their red truncated frontal shield. The species inhabits the southern US, central America, and a large part of South America, and is just one of the birds I discovered in California where they use a different name from the one used in Europe.
Apparently, this North America bird also has a relative on the Hawaiian Islands of O’ahu and Kaua’i, known as the ‘Alae ’Ula (burnt forehead). Legend has it that the bird brought the fire from the volcano to the gods of the Hawaiian people, but during the flight the bird’s white forehead was scorched red by the volcano’s fire.
Common gallinule Range Map
I later discovered this “same-bird, different-name” phenomenon applies to other species in North America. For example:
guillemots vs. common murres: the British guillemot takes its name from the French word for William – Guillaume – whereas the North American common murre is named after the call that it makes – a purring and murmuring.
divers vs. loons: the British divers (i.e. great northern, black-throated and red-throated) are believed named after their ability to catch fish, whereas the North American name probably originates from the old English word “lumne”, which means awkward or clumsy, and describes the bird’s poor ability to walk on land. Alternatively, it may have been taken from the Norwegian word “lune”, meaning to lament, and which describes the bird’s plaintive call.
skuas vs. jaegers: the smaller British skuas (i.e. Arctic, Pomarine and long-tailed) have the same name as their larger, dumpier, more ferocious cousin, the great skua. While the latter keeps its name in North America, the others are called jaegers. The word skua originates from the Faroese name for the bird -skuguur – and since all skuas harass other birds into dropping or disgorging their food – it appears that all species of this bird in Britain are named skua. In North America, the name jaeger is an extract from the German and Dutch words for hunter , reflecting its habit of chasing other sea birds.
tits vs. chickadees: Britain has seven species of tit (blue, coal, great, long-tailed, marsh, willow and crested), with the name derived from the old English word meaning “something small”. The name was in use back in the 1540s, and if you are wondering about the word being the slang term for a woman’s breast, this latter designation was inaugurated only as recently as 1928. The colorful plumage, habitat and shape of these birds distinguish them from one another. Their closely-related North American cousins are called chickadees because of their alarm call, but similarities of appearance exist:
coal tit vs. chestnut-backed chickadee
willow tit vs. black-capped chickadee
Other species of chickadee are unique to North America, except for the gray-headed chickadee which is called the Siberian tit throughout its domicile in northern Eurasia.
But back to moorhens and gallinules. There is another relative in the United States known as the purple gallinule that inhabits freshwater swamps and marshes in the southeastern states of the US. They have brilliant purple, blue, and green feathers, and while I have not seen one in California, they have a reputation for vagrancy, with individuals traveling as far west as here, and all the way down to the Galapagos Islands.
Whether they are called moorhens or gallinules, all these birds remain common and widespread, and generally are not at risk from climate change and other interventions, although loss of habitat is a general threat. In the UK, however, the moorhen is on the Amber conservation list because of its population decline during the 1970s and 1980s, and the current reduced clutch sizes during breeding, which possibly indicates a higher level of predator interference.
Meet the Eurasian common cuckoo bird and the North American brown-headed cowbird, both brood parasites. As a boy many years ago in northern England, I pursued a little brown bird called a hedge sparrow, flicking its tail and shuffling through dense bramble undergrowth and …
Eurasian/common teal bird (male) The first Eurasian or common teal I ever saw was a flock flying south over the sea at Spurn Point, Yorkshire, in England, during the early 1960s, presumably on their way to their wintering grounds around the Mediterranean. Spurn Point …
As a small wader and member of the plover family of birds, the dotterel is known for its friendly, sweet and trusting behavior towards humans. Consequently, it was hunted for sport, was easily caught, eaten by royalty as a delicacy during English Tudor times, and its brightly-colored feathers were used for fishing lures. Today, in Britain, it receives the highest conservation priority on the UK Red List of most endangered species.
I have never seen one of these medium-sized birds, or at least I have never been able to identify one. Many years ago, I and a friend watched a bird that flew like a plover and displayed the characteristic run-stop-and tilt-forward feeding behavior of species belonging to this bird family, but it did not display the usual plumage we associated with plovers. It was almost certainly a dotterel since I had already seen the more typical types of plover in Britain. I simply scribbled a note describing our sighting but took no further action. In my novel She Wore a Yellow Dress I describe some of my other bird watching disappointments. For example, I failed to see a peregrine falcon during a 1966 outing in Essex (chapter 12).
You can imagine dotterels running among the heath and grass of upland Scotland where today some 500 males incubate and rear their young? They nest on high, dry tundra. The female often ends the relationship with the male once the eggs are laid, leaving the male to take care of the offspring, and sometimes flies off as far away as Norway or Finland to find a new mate.
Dotterel nesting
Dotterels display a colorful plumage, especially during the breeding season, when their reddish/chestnut-colored underparts are at their brightest. Their back is streaked grey and a warm brown, they have a black belly, and possess a broad white eye stripe and white band around their neck. The bill is short and the legs are yellow. They also appear along the British coasts during the spring and autumn migrations as they move between northern Europe and North Africa and the Middle East.
Dotterel Range Map: orange – breeding; blue – wintering
There are very few left breeding in Britain. A population decrease of nearly 60 percent has occurred during the past 30 years due to global warming. Breeding ranges have retreated up hill and the birds’ nesting pattern has altered because of vegetation change and a reduction in snow cover. With a longer season for vegetation growth, some nesting areas have been lost to long grass, and the early disappearance of snow that reduces the availability of insects lessens the areas where the dotterel can feed. Currently, the species nests in parts of Scotland and on occasion in the English Lake District. Not surprisingly, the Scottish Gaelic name for the dotterel translates into “the fool of the moors”.
Killdeer
You only find dotterels in North America as a casual visitor, although a few do make the journey from Siberia to Alaska, and nest in the west of the state. The first recorded sighting in California of a dotterel was on the Farallon Islands, off San Francisco, in September 1974, and every few years additional sightings are reported, including at Point Reyes only a few miles from where I live. So maybe one day I can add this species to my Life List of birds, but in the meantime I accept the abundant and perky, noisy killdeer, as the substitute.
My final comment has to do with climate change. It is not just the dotterel that is affected, but birds generally, and in particular those that migrate. British birds arrive on average 9 days earlier than in the past and are slowly pushing their range northwards. American robins arrive in the Rockies two weeks earlier and before worms and other food are available for their offspring. Some non-migratory birds such as the British great tit nests too late to make use of the abundant caterpillars that emerge earlier because of warmer winters. Plants leaf sooner, that in turn causes leaf-eating larvae to hatch sooner. Rising temperatures, flooding, drought, wildfires, and sea level changes are all affecting the traditional habitat of birds and interfering with their food supplies.
Eurasian Red-Backed Shrike I must have been aged 13 at the time during the 1950s, when looking down near the blade of the spade, I spotted a large round object. It was dirty black, except for a distinctive blue-green patina caused by its copper …
European goldfinch (left) and American goldfinch (right) The European goldfinch, a native of Europe, North Africa and central Asia, was such an attractive bird that hundreds of thousands were taken from the wild to become cage birds in Britain less than 100 year ago. This …
John R Cammidge will use the information you provide on this form to be in touch with you and to provide updates and marketing via email.
You can change your mind at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in the footer of any email you receive from us, or by contacting us through our contact form. We will treat your information with respect. For more information about our privacy practices, please visit our Privacy Policy page. By submitting the form, you agree that we may process your information in accordance with these terms.